In 1972, Mary Ann Hiserman entered the Cowell program at UC Berkeley when she was twenty-five years old. At the time, she was the only woman of eleven students living in the program. In Design for Independent Living, Mary Ann reflects on her early experiences at Cowell, “Once in Berkeley I had my first truly ongoing contact with other disabled people my own age. I had my first relationships with men. I learned from others and was encouraged to help myself do things” (29).
Mary Ann was a design consultant and student of Ray Lifchez’s ARCH101 design studio and key informant in the groundbreaking ethnographic study, Design for Independent Living. She threw herself into ways to make campus accessible, including working as a consultant for the earliest environmental survey of Berkeley’s buildings and grounds in 1976. By 1979, Mary Ann was in her second year of a three-year professional degree program in the architecture department and on her way to a prominent career advocating for accessibility standards. She advocated for principles of Universal Design and became an expert on accessibility standards on and off Berkeley’s campus.